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VIOLINIST MARI KIMURA WILL SHOWCASE SIX INSTRUMENTAL WORKS FOR MUGIC®, HER
INNOVATIVE MOTION SENSOR INVENTION, AT ROULETTE NOVEMBER 18.
During the pandemic, the device has been gaining traction in colleges and conservatories
and has a growing user community.
WHERE AND WHEN:
"Interpretations: Mari Kimura / Joseph Kubera"
Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 8:00 PM
Roulette Intermedium, 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Presented by Roulette (https://roulette.org) and Interpretations (https://www.interpretations.info)
Tickets to live concert: $20. This concert will not be live streamed, but will
be available at a later date on Roulette website.
Buy tickets: https://ci.ovationtix.com/36368/performance/10834952
Box Office: (917) 267-0363
Doors open 7:00 PM. Complete program runs two hours with intermission.
Reviewers are invited.
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ryKBoo2h1mw1CJnM8
NEW YORK, November 1 -- On November 18 at Roulette, as part of an evening named "Interpretations: Mari Kimura / Joseph Kubera," violinist/composer Mari Kimura will share six instrumental works conceived for her motion sensor invention MUGIC®. It will be the most broad-ranging showcase to-date for the innovative device, which is helping to fuse the capabilities of classic, contemporary violin with improvisational, interactive computer music into a distinctive sound palette of its own.
Six pieces for MUGIC® will be offered, of which three are premieres: Kimura’s own "Iron Bird for cymbal and MUGIC®," performed by percussionist Aiyun Huang (World premiere); "Motion Notions" by Dai Fujikura (New York premiere), performed by Kimura on violin, and MUGIC®; and Kimura’s "KISMET for MUGIC® and ensemble," performed by Ensemble Decipher (US premiere). Three other works written and performed by Kimura will round out the hour.
This one-hour medley will be the first part of a two-part evening that is co-presented by The Interpretations Series and Roulette. In the second part, veteran pianist Joseph Kubera will perform a solo recital featuring "Block Design" by Tom Johnson, "Queens Plaza" by Daniel Rothman, and other works. (More info-see below.)
Roulette is located at 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. Tickets to the live concert are $20 and available at https://ci.ovationtix.com/36368/performance/10834952. Proof of vaccination is required for everyone attending.
This concert will not be live streamed, but will be available at a later date on Roulette website.
ABOUT MARI KIMURA
Mari Kimura (www.marikimura.com) is at the forefront of violinists who are extending
the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a musician,
she is renowned for her mastery of subharmonics--the production of pitches that
sound up to an octave below the violin's lowest string--as well as for her dynamic
performances as an improviser and interpreter of many notable compositions by
today's composers. She is the developer of "MUGIC®," a prototype
motion sensor for interactive performance, making her a leading figure in the
field of interactive computer music. She has been a soloist with such orchestras
as the Tokyo Symphony and the Hamburg Symphony and has received numerous awards
including Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Award, residency at IRCAM in Paris, and
Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She has been founding chair of Future Music Lab at
the Atlantic Music Festival since 2013. A faculty member at The Juilliard School
since 1998, she was appointed in 2017 as a Professor of Music at the Integrated
Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) program at UC Irvine. In 2020,
she received the Certificate of Congressional Recognition from the US House
of Representatives and California Legislature for being nominated as the Entrepreneur
Leader of the Year award at UCI. (www.marikimura.com)
ABOUT MUGIC®
MUGIC® is a small, versatile and affordable motion sensor that enables performers
to use movement to control virtually anything in software, providing a seamless
motion-driven interface for real-time multimedia performances. A small, wearable
electronic gadget, it contains a gyroscope, accelerometers and a magnetometer,
communicating by WiFi with sound and projection systems of the concert space.
With it, a performer can create sounds, control effects, change lighting parameters,
generate visuals, and more with the simple wave of a hand. In its early development,
MUGIC® was enclosed in a glove worn on violinist Mari Kiura's bowing hand.
Subsequently, it has been attached to, flutes, clarinets, pianists' and percussionists'
hands, dancers' costumes and even a round rubber dog chew toy that is rolled
and thrown around the stage.
While a student at Juilliard, Kimura specialized in contemporary music for the violin and developed extended techniques such as the Subharmonics--producing pitches an octave below the violin's lowest string. This put her at the forefront of violinists who were extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument.
In the 2000s, married to French computer scientist Hervé Brönnimann, having to raise two small children and traveling less, she became more and more interested in composing, which could be done at home. In 2010, she was a composer in residence at IRCAM in Paris in musical research, working closely with Sound Music Movement interaction team, and learning about how motion sensors could be a tool to expand musical expression. In 2013, she started a Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival every summer, working with many different instrumentalists and learning about motion and instrumental playing. The current device is a successor to a glove-enclosed bowing motion sensor developed at IRCAM in France which Ms. Kimura used in concerts between 2009 and 2014. She developed a prototype of today's MUGIC® with media artist Liubo Borissov in 2015, supported by ITAC.org/NYSCA through Harvestworks. Since January 2018, Kimura has been evolving a new version through a Multidisciplinary Design Program at Calit2 at UC Irvine (www.calit2.net) With "free tryouts" software available from the MUGIC® website and plug-and-play hardware, the latest version of the device is 1" x 1.8" x 1.4" (2.6 x 4.5 x 1.5 cm) and weighs approximately 0.6 ounces (18 grams.). It has been developed to be as small and unobtrusive as possible for performance.
The name MUGIC® is an acronym for Music/User Gesture Interface Control, but Kimura likes one customer's comment: “Music + Magic = MUGIC®”!
In September 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Kimura started to sell MUGIC® to fellow artists and educational institutions and is now building a community of users and developers. There is a growing cohort of "MUGIC® gurus" in music departments around the country. The device is now used not only by musicians, but also by actors, dancers and even painters in universities including Harvard, the Universities of Toronto, Miami and South Florida, Bowling Green State University, UCI, Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and Juilliard. Profiles of the most experienced MUGIC® users and teachers, who have closely worked with Ms. Kimura, can be found at https://mugicmotion.com/mugic-gurus.
The MUGIC® project in 2015 was partially funded by itac.org (Industry+Technology Assistance Corp) that is supported by NYSCA, Governor Cuomo and the NY State Legislature, The Rockefeller Foundation’s NYC Cultural Innovation Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.
PROGRAM OF "INTERPRETATIONS: MARI KIMURA / JOSEPH KUBERA"
a co-production between Interpretations and Roulette
Part 1 - Mari Kimura (50 min.)
"Listen to the MUGIC® - Music with Motion Sensor"
Mari Kimura leads off the evening with a turntable of six works for MUGIC®, of which three are premieres. Three of the six are written and performed by Mari Kimura, one was written for her by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and two were written by her under commissions by other artists.
"KISMET for ensemble and MUGIC®" by Mari Kumura (2021, US Premiere), performed by Ensemble Decipher -- Ensemble Decipher is a six-person experimental music group that performs with vintage, contemporary, and emerging technologies. Kismet means fate or destiny. Our environment--climate and pandemic--affects our destiny and is always evolving. The performance is not supposed to be dreading or serious, but precarious and joyful as life itself. Mari Kimura wanted to model "Kismet" in the form of an 'orb' that performers could carry, roll or toss in the air. So the MUGIC® sensor is mounted inside a round rubber dog chew toy and transmits data via WIFI to a computer, affecting the sounds in real time. Another MUGIC® sensor, worn by the violinist, detects her physical expression and communicates with her computer, affecting the sound of both the violinist and a vocalist. The piece was commissioned for Ensemble Decipher by New Music for Strings Festival (NMSF) in Aarhus, Denmark.
"Iron Bird for Cymbal and MUGIC®" by Mari Kimura (2021, World
Premiere), performed by Aiyun Huang on Cymbal --
Commissioned by virtuoso Taiwanese percussionist Aiyun Huang, is it named for
a poem by a young Chinese female poet depicting female steel workers in China.
It was written as a call for solidarity after hearing about attacks on Asian
women in New York last year at the height of the Covid crisis. A prototype version
was performed at the Nebula Festival in Rome last June.
"Motion Notions" by Dai Fujikura (2019, NY Premiere), performed by
Mari Kimura, violin --
This is the first MUGIC® commission to Dai Fujikura, one of the most lauded
Japanese composers of his generation. In it, the MUGIC® sensor analyzes
the bowing gesture, creating effects produced by the energy, direction and speed
of the bow. "Motion Notions" was made possible with the funds supported
by the University of California, Irvine. Mari Kimura gave the world premiere
on July 9, 2019 at the Chigiana International Festival, Palazzo Chigi Saracini
in Siena, Italy. "Motion Notions" is published by Ricordi and Kimura’s
recording of the piece was just released by SONY in September.
"Rossby Waving" for violin, MUGIC® and graphics" by Mari
Kiimura (2017), performed by Mari Kimura with graphics by Liubo Borissov --
The title is taken from “Rossby Wave”, a natural atmospheric phenomenon
relating to rotation of the planet. When the Rossby Wave ‘breaks’
, it could cause extreme climate conditions as El Niño/La Niña.
The MUGIC® sensor tracks the intrinsic musical gestures and physical gestures
of the performer, interacting with interactive processing of audio and video.
"Canon Elastique" (2011), written and performed by Mari Kimura --
Mari Kimura writes, "This piece was written while I spent my summer as
a Composer in Residence in Musical Research at IRCAM working with the Sound
Music Movement Team. I really loved the idea that I could actually change what
I just performed in real time, or the notion of “changing the past”.
The computer analyzes the speed of my bow, then speeds up or slows down the
second voice; I am able to change the second voice in a ‘canon’,
thus ‘change’ my past."
"Clone Barcarolle" (2009), written and performed by Mari Kimura --
Clone Barcarolle is Mari Kimura's first attempt at using IRCAM’s motion
sensor to use as a 'cloning' device. She 'clones' the movement of her bow with
the sound of my playing together. At the beginning of "Clone Barcarolle,"
she plays a simple open-string crossing, which is recorded combined with the
recording of her bowing motion. Then she plays a ‘virtual duet’
with her own "clone."
MORE INFORMATION:
MUGIC® website: https://mugicmotion.com
History of MUGIC®: https://mugicmotion.com/our-story
Facebook MUGIC® Family User Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/778813632904888
Instagram: @mugicmotion
Twitter: @marikimura
Press Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ryKBoo2h1mw1CJnM8
A L S O A P P E A R I N G
Part 2 - Joseph Kubera (50 min.)
Veteran pianist Joseph Kubera performs a solo recital featuring "Block Design" by Tom Johnson, "Queens Plaza" by Daniel Rothman, and other works.
Mr. Kubera has been a leading interpreter of contemporary music for the past 30 years. He has been soloist at such festivals as the Berlin Inventionen, the Warsaw Autumn and Prague Spring, Miami’s Subtropics Festival and Berkeley’s Edgefest. He has been pianist in residence at the Ostrava Days New Music Festival since its inception in 2001. Mr. Kubera has been awarded grants through the NEA Solo Recitalist Program and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and was a Creative Associate with the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo in its heyday.
He has had a long and committed relationship to John Cage and his music since the early 1970s. One of the few pianists performing the difficult chance-based, post-1950 works, he has recorded the complete Music of Changes and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and has toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Cage’s invitation.
In recent years, he has championed works by Julius Eastman and Michael Byron. Other composers who have written for Mr. Kubera include Larry Austin, Anthony Coleman, David First, Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Howard Riley, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny.
ABOUT INTERPRETATIONS
The Interpretations series (https://www.interpretations.info), now in its 32nd
season, is a New York-based concert series focusing on the relationship between
contemporary composers and their interpreters. Sometimes the interpreters are
the composers themselves; more often, the series features performers who specialize
in the interpretation of new music. Since its inception in 1989, Interpretations
has featured leading figures in contemporary music and multimedia, including
Muhal Richard Abrams, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, FLUX Quartet,
Joseph Kubera, Annea Lockwood, and Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock,
Pauline Oliveros, Ursula Oppens and Morton Subotnick. (https://www.interpretations.info/)
ABOUT ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM
Founded in 1978, Roulette’s mission is to support artists creating new
and adventurous art in all disciplines by providing them with a venue and resources
to realize their creative visions and to build an audience interested in the
evolution of experimental art. The institution is now located at 509 Atlantic
Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217. (https://roulette.org)
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Proof of Vaccination: In accordance with New York City’s Key to NYC policy, Roulette will require everyone entering Roulette to provide proof of vaccination. You can read more about this policy and how to submit your proof in advance by visiting roulette.org/safety.